St. Paul, Minn. — The United States weathered a nervy stretch during the second period against Germany in their opening game of the 2026 World Junior, but outscored any drama with a 6-3 win at Grand Casino Arena in front of 14,276 to start the tournament. The red, white and blue got two goals from Will Zellers, and single tallies from Max Plante, Chase Reid, Will Horcoff and Cole Eiserman during the win.

“Our goals got us out of trouble,” said coach Bob Motzko. “That’s something we’ve got to identify with our group. I love it when our offense gets us out, but sometimes we’ve got to get through it with detail.”

The USA scored the first three goals of the game and looked like they might repeat the performance of their 8-0 pre-tournament game against the Germans early. Instead, Germany got a late first period goal from Timo Kose and added two in the second from Simon Seidl and Lenny Boos to make the host nation a bit nervous. Motzko said he could sense it getting quiet on the bench at times during the second as the players fought through some costly turnovers.

USA Captain Brodie Ziemer said the turnovers during the second were an issue and it was something they’ve talked about during camp in Duluth that started two weeks ago.

“It came out a little bit tonight,” said Ziemer. “So we’re just gonna have to get rid of that, get that out of our game and get back to work. I liked our game at times, and then I didn’t like it at other times. It’s such a quick tournament, we’ve got a lot to clean up. I think if we can just play like we did in those five minute spans for the whole 60, we’re gonna really like the results.”

Ziemer was named captain of the squad this week and Motzko said it wasn’t his call on giving a Minnesota kid the ‘C’ and that his teammates picked him. The coaching staff in particular had conversations with returning players who said that one guy they leaned on was Ziemer who tallied one assist Friday.

“I’m so honored, I’m feeling super blessed,” said Ziemer on being named captain. “It’s such a good group of dudes to be able to captain for and getting to do it on such a big stage, in my home state, I’m just super blessed, super lucky.”

The Americans have a quick turnaround for the second game of the tournament with a Saturday match-up against Switzerland back at Grand Casino Arena at 5 PM. The Swiss were off for the first night of the tournament and the United States had to grind through their opening game. Defenseman Cole Hutson in particular will have to recover quickly as he played over 24 minutes in the opening game.

“I want to see how we respond now. I want to grow,” said Motzko. “You want to take the steps, clean up some of the things we did. It’s a journey, you’re going to have this and we want to see more detail in our game tomorrow. Same energy, more detail.”

“We have this little runway here to get it up in the air and they’re figuring it out. Sometimes mistakes are good, so we can paint the path forward. I’d rather be making them now and figuring it out as we go.”